Ordinary People and Disposable Objects

Israeli-based designer Idan Friedman embosses portraits on cheap aluminum trays as part of his Profiles project. See more of Friedman’s delicately executed portraits here

Artist Shout Out: Annie Lapin

According to Honor Fraser Gallery (LA), home of Annie Lapin’s latest solo exhibition entitled The Pure Space Animate, which opens May 21 and runs through July 9:

In a new group of paintings on canvas, Lapin’s luscious, high-energy compositions co-mingle painterly conventions of representation with an obliterating gestural abstraction. Lapin refers to specters of realism that haunt the abstraction in these richly layered paintings. In The Pure Space Animate, there is less occasion for the multi-figure groups and enigmatic narratives of previous works, with further prominence shifted to the intensive formal activity. The coherent scenic space and figural focal points which remain are yet more densely encircled and perforated by painterly forces that counteract their legibility, leaving the viewing experience characteristically unstable.

One seeks and temporarily sees indications of illusionistic space – a horizon line, a column, the shadow of a tree – only to find that it behaves instead the next moment as a collection of sinuous ribbons of paint bound to the surface. And it is this contrasting visual interpretation, this unresolved chord, that Lapin seeks to strike in the interest of a phenomenological experience of works as “constantly emerging” for the viewer. Essential to the expressiveness in Lapin’s paintings is the articulation of space. The artist has developed a palette of elemental forces extracted from a lineage of painting and visual culture of her own devising. These sets of formal relationships – such as a lilting perspective or a characteristic distribution of masses across the picture plane – are isolated from their sources and given new life as structuring forces for Lapin’s paralinguistic figures and spaces. In particular, a number of the works in The Pure Space Animate submit compositional conventions from sensuous Rococo landscapes to the gravitational pull of the pure relations of abstract painting…

See more of Lapin’s work here and here

Watch a video about Lapin and her work here

“The History or Hysterical Memory” 2010, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 inches

“Bi-cyclic and Tri-cyclic Romantics” 2009, Casein, acrylic, and egg tempera on panel, 48 x 72 inches

“Private Outdoor Facial Coronation” 2009, Casein and oil on panel, 33 x 47 inches

“Perverts” 2009. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches

The Pottery of George E. Ohr

Via the Ohr-O’Keffe Museum of Art:

George Ohr (1857-1918) the self-proclaimed “Mad Potter of Biloxi” created a body of ceramic work which defied the aesthetic conventions of 19th century America. Ohr is considered an early leader in the modernist movement and it is his creative spirit which informs the mission of the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum. His extraordinary cultural legacy is recognized for its power and integrity and for its important influence on 20th and 21st century art. Ohr’s work was rediscovered in the 1960s and is admired by artists and collectors alike.

In May 2009, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York celebrated the opening of the Robert Ellison Art Pottery Collection on  the Mezzanine Balcony of the New American Wing prominently featuring selected works by George Ohr. As Ohr had often predicted, his genius was at long last recognized by the world.

As he once said in interview, “I am making pottery for art’s sake, God’s sake, the future generation, and — by present indications — for my own satisfaction, but when I’m gone my work … will be prized, honored and cherished.”

Over ninety years after Ohr’s death, it is a fitting tribute to the artist that one of the 21st century’s most admired architects, Frank Gehry, created the Museum’s award winning design.

Learn more about Ohr’s life and work from the Smithsonian Magazine

See more of Ohr’s pottery here

Artist Shout Out: Roland Flexner

Artist Bio/Statement:

Born in 1944 in Nice, France, Roland Flexner has lived and worked in New York since 1982. As a young artist he aligned himself with the Nouveau Réaliste and Supports/Surfaces movements; since the ’90s, he has created delicate and precise drawings on paper, including his ongoing Vanitas series of skulls and skeletons. Many of Flexner’s works of the past decade are based on the Japanese art of suminagashi—the manipulation of ink and water on gelatin—a technique he was introduced to during an extended residency in Japan. A selection of these drawings were included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, and Flexner’s work has been the subject of exhibitions at P.S.1/MoMA; The Royal Academy of Arts in London, England; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA; Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art; and both Exit Art and The Drawing Center in New York City, among other venues. Flexner is represented by D’Amelio Terras Gallery in New York City.

See more from Flexner’s Sumi Drawing series here

All works are Sumi ink on gelatin

Artist Shout Out: Jessica Harrison

Artist Statement (Excerpt):

The things I make are a complex description of simultaneous unmaking and making, deconstructing an object or a body before putting it back together again – this could be interpreted as a violent process, but is often a very delicate and fragile one, a process of transplantation rather than dislocation. The works are an attempt to change the relationship of the object to the body, making visible the invisible, opening up something normally closed, softening a usually hard surface.

I am exploring the significance of surfaces in our construction of knowledge through making and experimenting, playing on our instincts and assumptions built from an historical optical hierarchy and propensity to touch what catches our attention. Our surfaces do not just act as boundaries between our inside and outside, between ‘us’ and ‘that’, but play the most vital role in our perceptions of the world around us.  The objects I make attempt to unpack these perceptions and interrupt these interfaces to bring our assumptions to the surface.

From Harrison’s ”Breaking” series. All figures are mixed media.

Harrison’s sculptures, prints and drawings and  will be on display at the Jealous Gallery starting on April 28th.

See more of Harrison’s work here